For the intravenous administration of fluids such as blood, electrolytes, medicine, foodstuffs and the like, one normally uses a hollow needle or a catheter introduced into a superficial artery or vein and connected through a tubing to the infusion container. The tubing is normally fixed to the patient's skin with an adhesive plaster or a bandage close to the point of insertion in order to stabilise it. Because of the flexibility of the tubing, the patient's movements or weak parts of the tubing may cause the tubing to bend, thus obstructing or even stopping the infusion.
In order to obtain a continuous and optimum rate of flow of the administered infusion fluid, the rate of flow must be regularly and carefully controlled. The control of the rate of infusion is important in order to obtain optimum therapeutic results. Means for the control of flow such as catheter clamps, dropping chambers and infusion pumps are a contributing factor, but the function of these means becomes inoperative when the tubing bends. A bend of the tubing may entail a prolonged time of infusion or even a complete stop of the infusion, which has important consequences for the patient.
When administering infusion fluid to a patient, it is common to make a safety loop and fix this loop to the patient in order to prevent the weight and direction of the tubing from causing traction to the catheter introduced into a superficial vein and thus causing the catheter to be drawn out of the patient.
WO-A-99/56802 discloses a device for supporting tubing in a safety loop in which the outer body of the device is shaped as the safety loop and in which the tubing is placed along with and attached to the device. However, this device suffers from the drawback that it consists of two parts assembled around the tubing, which makes it difficult to use the device. Moreover, this device has an extra component that has to be fixed with separate plaster or a similar further component in the vicinity of the point of insertion which is already loaded with a catheter, a fixation plaster for retaining the catheter, and an assembly device for catheter and infusion tubing.
It is of crucial importance that the catheter is situated as steadily as possible in order to avoid that it settles against the vascular wall or a venous valve and thus obstructs the infusion—or that it perforates the vascular wall so that the infusion fluid enters into the surrounding tissue.
The device according to WO-A-99/56802 describes a compact support of the infusion tubing in the entire curve, but it may involve great difficulties to fix the safety loop with this device onto anatomically complicated locations, e.g. onto the back of the hand or the cubital fossa, without causing traction to or movement of the catheter. Furthermore, since the device according to WO-A-99/56802 is a compact support of the infusion tubing, the device cannot adapt to the movements of the skin of the patient and will therefore instead lead to a traction of the skin of the patient, each time the patient moves the part of the body having the device attached thereto, for example a hand.
On this background, it is the object of the present invention to provide a solution to the above-mentioned problems of the prior art to obtain a stable support of an intravenous or intra-arterial infusion tubing.